How I rode the rising wave of private equity

In his new book Sir Ronald Cohen explains how he latched on to private equity in its infancy and then rode it to the top with Apax Partners

WHEN do you discover that you are cut out to be an entrepreneur? To answer this question, it might be useful to look at the example of my own career.

I was born in Cairo. As a child I spoke French at home; Arabic was my second language; I did not speak English at all. Then, when I was 11 years old, President Gamal Abdel Nasser's reaction to the Suez crisis made the life of a Jewish family like ours very difficult.

Because my mother carried a British passport, we were forced to leave. We were allowed to take 10 Egyptian pounds and a suitcase each; we had to leave everything else behind. I left clutching my stamp collection and remember worrying that somebody might take it away from me. We moved to London.

Once we settled in, I went to a state school in northwest London. I started with